Product Description

Most people believe that cult members are mentally unbalanced or are misfits who live in remote places, like the doomed devotees of Jim Jones and David Koresh. We take comfort in the fact that the influences of cults are far removed from our everyday lives.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Over the past two decades, in the United States alone, an estimated twenty million people have joined cults. Today, three to five thousand cults are working to recruit new members. At any point in time, two-and-a-half to three million Americans are active cult members. Often a cult is disguised as a legitimate business or organization: a restaurant, self-help group, psychotherapy clinic, or leadership training program could be a front for a cult. Anyone—no matter what age or income level—could be susceptible to the covert and seductive nature of a cult. People are especially vulnerable to these masterful manipulators during periods of traumatic life changes: a college student away from home for the first time, a grief-stricken widow in need of understanding and support, or a businessperson transferred by his or her employer to a new and unfamiliar community.
The country's leading authority on cults, Margaret Thaler Singer, calls on her nearly fifty years of expertise to write the definitive book on cults. Written with author and former cult member Janja Lalich, Singer's first book is a shocking exposea that reveals what cults are and how they work. Cults in Our Midst offers vital information on how to help people escape cult entrapments and recover from the experience. This compelling book debunks commonly held myths and answers perplexing questions about cults such as:

• Why don't people just leave cults?
  (li> What characteristics do cults have in common?
  
• Why isn't the U.S. Marines or Alcoholics Anonymous considered a cult?
  
• Who are the people most likely to join cults?
  
• Where can I go for help if someone I love is living in a cult?
  
• What actions can we take to prevent the spread of cults' influence?

Cults in Our Midst is filled with practical strategies and suggestions for understanding the cult phenomenon and helping cult members break free. The authors outline the methods of exit counseling that have been used successfully with thousands of cult members and address major areas of post-cult adjustment. Former cult members will find this book to be an invaluable resource to help them comprehend their cult experience and reclaim their lives.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #856575 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Clinical psychologist Singer, emeritus professor at Berkeley, and former cult member Lalich (coauthor of Captive Hearts, Captive Minds) here present an instructive report on the cult phenomenon, which they regard as a growing menace around the world. They define cults as organizations that feature "coordinated programs of coercive influence and behavioral control," many religiously or politically oriented and increasingly centered on New Age self-improvement techniques that they claim are now being peddled to businesses. They enumerate the dangers of cults to the individual, particularly the attack on the sense of self; they analyze the leaders' techniques (almost all these groups are authoritarian), including isolation from family and friends, trance induction, guided imagery and indirect suggestion; they offer practical advice on methods of helping survivors to escape and recover. Includes an appendix of resources and organizations for those seeking help.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In 1992, Singer (emeritus adjunct, psychology, Univ. of California at Berkeley) unsuccessfully sued the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association, alleging conspiracy to discredit her research and destroy her reputation. That suit and this book hinge on whether Singer's theory of "coercive persuasion" (i.e., nonphysical coercion) is demonstrably valid. Fully a third of this book is a replay of Singer's previous studies and arguments, with the remainder applying her questioned paradigm to cult-associated tragedies. While Midst does present numerous examples of deceptive recruitment and other unethical practices, no new ground is broken. Further, as the title implies, Singer's approach is alarmist and often tabloidesque. Lalich's earlier Captive Hearts, Captive Minds (LJ 7/94) is a better choice, contending with cult-associated problems in a more pragmatic, more substantial, and less hysterical manner. In addition, all libraries should own a copy of J. Gordon Melton's definitive Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America (Garland, 1992. 2d. rev. ed.).?Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Though the title may seem sensational, the book is a well-researched, enlightening introduction to a serious subject. Singer is a clinical psychologist and emeritus adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has interviewed several thousand former cult members and testified about cults and their "thought reform" tactics; Lalich is a professional writer and former cult member. The strength of Cults in Our Midst is its clear explanation of the nature of cults, how they operate, the threat they pose to individuals, families, and society, and how others can help cult survivors escape and recover. Many types of cultic relationships are considered, from tiny religious or occult groups to the "large group awareness training" programs that have infiltrated workplaces. The book makes key distinctions between New Age ideas and the cults that use these concepts and between types of persuasion, from education to propaganda to cults' manipulative "thought reform." Most Americans, Cults in Our Midst stresses, will be vulnerable to cults at some point in their lives. Includes resource and suggested reading lists. Mary Carroll

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Customer Reviews

Excellent overview.
The outline of the book is straightforward: Part one identifies what a cult is. Ms. Singer takes care to emphasize that the term "cult" is a netural one.

Part two details the methods used by these cults. And it is in this area that the distinction between legitimate groups are distinguished from manipulative groups whose ultimate goal is to serve the will of the cult leader without criticism, rather than a beneficial goal beyond the personal service of the cult leadership.

A true self-help group, like Alcoholics Anonymous or a local church, will allow for the possibility that the convert might leave, and will not view it as a threat to the organization. As detailed by the anecdotal evidence in the book, the lengths to which the (malignant) cult leadership will stifle internal dissent and outside criticism, demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of these cults and their inherent distrust of an individual's self-determination. This, I can tell you, is *not* what goes on in your normal neighborhood church.

The final part is instructive as it is heartbreaking, as it emphasizes the loss of children's life, and on how to get people out of the cult. As Singer's anecdotal stories about ex-cult members compound upon the reader, the proper reaction to these types of groups should be growing contempt, as many of the members seem unable to formulate any mental or spiritual foundation after having been manipulated so perversely.

What Makes Cults Tick?
Cults use motivational psychology to create closed controlling environments where cult members have little opportunity for free thinking. Societal organizations such as the advertising and sales industries, schools, and governmental organizations also use motivational psychology, but these organizations exert less control over members' lives. Some cults control *all* aspects of their members' lives, including where members work and live, members' social companions, members' sexual companions (if any), and even when members can use the bathroom. Cults achieve complete control through a program of deliberate isolation plus psychological reward and punishment. Cult members mechanically serve the cult leadership's goals and fantasies, often accumulating money, wealth and power for the cult leadership.

Professor Singer is a psychologist with over fifty years of research and clinical experience, and her collaborator Janja Lalich is a former cult member. Together they have produced a well-written text describing 'What Are Cults' and 'How Do They Work'. This very readable text is filled with specific examples describing how cults affect their membership, and examples describing the obstacles that former cult members face if they return to overall society. The discussion describes the use and effects of extreme motivational psychology within cults. The discussion also assists understanding motivational psychology use and effects within overall society.

"Cults In Our Midst: ..." was written in 1995. Since 1995 the United States' sexual mores (reflected by the entertainment media) have liberalized, sexually transmitted disease has increased, and societal affluence has lessened. If this text was revised in 2003, I believe that additional discussion of (lack of, or unconventional) sexuality and (lack of) food as motivators and punishment would be warranted.

An incredible eye-opener...
OK, folks, I'm one of the "culties" Singer wrote about. I have an IQ of 140, an MBA and a successful business career. None-the-less, for 27 years I followed the "advice" and received the twisted, NOT "unconditional love" of a guru. Along with my "special" friends we supported him while he lied to us about just about everything... his background, our "faults and inadequacies," and especially, about our likelihood of surviving without his "help." Pretty bizarre, definately true, and all too common. Singer and Lalich's book describes perfectly the way he ate away at our self-confidence and kept us dependant. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK! We are all more susceptable to brainwashing than we want to believe. Read the book, discuss it with your friends, with your children, with your parents. Learn the difference between a convincing argrument and being brainwashed. The mind you save may be your own. This should be required reading in every school and in every parent's group in the country.